Pale Ghosts
by echtranerai
Summary: Carol and Daryl watch the sunset. One-shot.


**This piece is something I felt compelled to write after re-reading one of my favorite pieces of poetry: ****_A Dialogue of Self and Soul_****by William Yeats. He's definitely my favorite Irish poet, if not my most favorite poet of all.**

**This poem is about self-discovery and actualization. The stanza I'm quoting here specifically relates to owning your life experience and gaining agency from it- "Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!" means being able to look back on a less than perfect life filled with mistakes, to simply move past it.**

**I'm hoping there are some more lit nerds on here that'll appreciate this :) I love random inspiration.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

_I am content to live it all again  
And yet again, if it be life to pitch  
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,  
A blind man battering blind men; _

As he swung the hack-saw through the sunken flesh of a walker, the blade cutting through the rotten skull with ease, Daryl couldn't help but stare curiously as the misshapen form crumbled at his feet. The soft splitting skull thud onto the toe of his boots and from the incision poured the black remains of what must've once been a healthy brain.

How many times had he had the urge to do the same to his father? How many times had he imagined the stocky, muscled legs of his abuser bending to fall before him? How many times had he wished he had the courage to try...

But he had not found courage; his head buried deep and unseeing in the dark ether of his own isolation. Instead, he'd lived his life in the shadow of self-doubt – stagnating in what was familiar and safe.

Until he no longer had a choice. Until it was either band with others to survive or die alone. A decision not easily made – until she told him she couldn't lose him, too.

He stared down at the dead eyes of the walker, open and staring unseeing into the afternoon sun. Blind to choice, to bravery or caution – blind to life.

The simple truth was that his life leading up to this point had been little different from the beasts he now slaughtered – rote, predatory and callous.

And yet he was content to live it all again, if it meant ending up here. With them. With her.

_Or into that most fecund ditch of all,  
The folly that man does  
Or must suffer, if he woos  
A proud woman not kindred of his soul. _

"That blade is getting dull," Carol tsked, pulling her small 'pig-sticker' from the eye socket of an approaching walker. Wiping the grime of the blade of her jeans, he clasped Daryl on the shoulder, concerned by his vacant expression. "Daryl?"

"Mmm," Daryl's eyes refocused and he was surprised to see her face so close to his own. "Sorry, 'm thinkin'."

"About?" She asked, with that sweet-as-pie tone that bounced around his head during quiet moments.

"I ain't so different than them," he gestured to the walker she had just brought down. "Well, I ain't used to be."

She wrinkled her nose at him, a hand coming up to balance on her delicate hip. "Well you're sure as hell different now." She smiled, her hand raising as if to brush along his cheek bone but falling short as she thought better of it. "You're like me. A late bloomer.

_I am content to follow to its source  
Every event in action or in thought;  
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! _

"Can't just let go of it though." His thumb found his mouth and he chewed nervously on the nail as Carol walked to the small foot-bridge over a small creek. She motioned for him to join her as she swung he feet over the side.

He fell into place next to her, watched as she clasped a hand over mouth as she yawned. She looked younger in direct sunlight, fuller and supple. He stared down at the reflection of their bodies next to each other in the creek, a pair of pale watery ghosts he almost didn't recognize. He dipped his toe in to ripple the surface and the images to whirled together, their bodies indistinguishable from one another in the glittering surface stream.

"If I've learned anything from all this," she said, motioning to the now cleared field of walkers, "It's that you divine your own fate. We choose exactly who we are."

At the silence she was met with, she smiled and placed her warm hand on top of his own. "When it came time, you choose to be the best man I've ever known. Let the other stuff float downstream."

_When such as I cast out remorse  
So great a sweetness flows into the breast  
We must laugh and we must sing,  
We are blest by everything,_

"Is that righ'?" He felt himself smile and damn, if it didn't feel just a bit natural around her these days.

"More right than God's own truth," she laughed lightly, "Are you doubting me?"

"Not fer a minute."

In a rare moment of emotional bravery, he sought out the the delicate skin of her face and brushed his lips right along her brow bone, as she had done to him so many months ago.

As unexpected as it was, Carol didn't shy away, choosing to slouch into his side, dropping her head onto his shoulder.

They sat in silence; the sun waning in the sky, burning down on them like the smoldering wick of their lives. Suddenly, it didn't matter so much what happened when the flame held it's final flicker. Suddenly, all that mattered was the heat they shared, the truth of who they had made each other.

And the current rocked on before them, steady as a heart beat.

_Everything we look upon is blest. _


End file.
